In 1957, when the public first heard about plans for a cellulose plant at
Baikalsk, people who had mutely obeyed the Soviet government for 40 years
finally howled in protest. Local scientists, writers, fishermen, and ordinary
citizens banded together to fight the plant, igniting an environmental movement
that was a direct forebear of all Soviet activism to come. Their protests
were mostly ignored. Yet at a time in the Soviet Union when the fires of free
speech were being stamped out wherever they appeared, a small flicker burned
fiercely in the Siberian wilderness.

After years of protest, the lake's defender were rewarded in April,
1987, when the Soviet government issued a comprehensive decree protecting
Lake Baikal. Among other things, it abolished logging anywhere close to
the lake shore and decreed that the cellulose plant be "reprofiled"
for activities harmless to the environment by 1993. Exactly what those activities
might be has not been decided.

Meanwhile the
dumping of industrial waste into Baikal continues, and bilious smoke still
rises from the plant 24 hours a day.

For over 30 years this very iussue has been the centerpiece of discussions
and arguments between scientists, environmentalists, developers, industrialists
and governmental officials. The environmentalists lost the battle to stop
construction of this huge factory on the shores of Baikal in the 1960's.
Since then, there have been various efforts to use common sense and find
an alternative to the existence of the Pulp and Paper Plant at the southernmost
point of Baikal. Some of these efforts have been more obvious, but mostly
they have consisted of "routine" work by researchers, scientists,
and those who cared.

Dozens of international expeditions that worked on Baikal during recent
years have come to the unanimous opinion: Baikal remains the cleanest reserve
of fresh water, but the local alterations in its ecosystem near the Baikal
pulp-and-paper plant and the region where the Selenga River flows
into Baikal, impose their negative effects on its inhabitants.

The intensive exploitation of the Baikal Territory adversely affects the
primordial, easily injured Siberian nature. We haven't yet learnt to live in
harmony with it, and the way to this seems to be long.